


Contretemps

by PoppyAlexander



Series: Road to Home [2]
Category: Doctor Who (2005), Sherlock (TV)
Genre: 221B Baker Street, Anal Sex, Blow Jobs, Crossover, F/M, Hand Jobs, Life After the Doctor, M/M, Marriage, Multi, Post Reichenbach, References to Torture, Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-17
Updated: 2013-05-17
Packaged: 2017-12-12 02:34:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/806161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PoppyAlexander/pseuds/PoppyAlexander
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock's got a secret. Donna might be pregnant. John wants to buy a big bed and sleep in between them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Contretemps

**Author's Note:**

> Part Two of the "Road to Home" series.
> 
> If you want more of John and Donna, their story began in "Date Mates" and continued in "Saudade," (part one of this series) which precedes this story by just a few minutes.
> 
> You need not be a Doctor Who fan to enjoy this story; it is primarily a Sherlock story.
> 
> I reserve the "Explicit" rating for stories which contain rape/non-con, extreme violence, or possible triggers, but use the "Mature" rating for even graphic depictions of sex between consenting adults. This story contains sexually graphic language.

“Donna, darling!” exclaimed her grand-dad, Wilf, with obvious surprise, “We weren’t expecting you. . .” He pulled the front door fully open and stood aside so Donna could come in. He looked her up and down, knitting his brow. “Everything all right, luv?” He started to reach for her bag, but Donna let it slip from her fingers so it hit the floor between them with a thud, shook her head back and forth emphatically, and reached her arms out for a hug.

“Oh, sweetheart,” he soothed. Donna was grateful he didn’t ask her what was wrong; she didn’t have the energy to explain.

“Donna?” Her mother emerged into the foyer, already in her dressing gown and slippers though it wasn’t yet nine o’clock. “What on earth. Did you fight with John?”

“Don’t scold the girl, Sylvia,” Wilf said. Donna pulled back from his embrace, wiped her eyes with her knuckles.

“I just need my old bed,” Donna said, “Everything’s going to be fine.” Even to her own ears, Donna’s voice sounded weary. She felt deflated.

Sylvia’s mouth moved to speak, but she managed to bite down on it. “Of course, of course,” she said. “Come in.” Donna took her bag from her grand-dad’s hand and started up the stairs without even taking off her coat. Sylvia asked, “Do you need anything? A cup of tea?” she sounded more puzzled than sympathetic.

Donna didn’t look back, continued up the stairs. “Nothing. Good night.” It would have been easy enough to lie, say that she and John had rowed, but Donna couldn’t see the point; the truth would come out sooner or later, that much was clear. And even the most cursory explanation for why she had left the Baker Street flat to spend the night with her mum and grandfather—“Sherlock’s back”—would only invite a thousand, thousand questions Donna couldn’t bear to try answering. Her initial shock had given way to fury at Mycroft Holmes for springing his brother on them without warning, and then, ultimately, she’d sobbed the whole way in the cab to Chiswick. Donna was more tired than she’d ever been.

She entered her old room, dropped her bag on the floor, shut the door behind her. She undressed in the dark, leaving her coat, jeans, and jumper in a heap by the foot of the bed. She reached under the pillows for the top edge of the bedcovers, dragged them back, and slipped gratefully into the familiar indentation in her mattress. Donna nestled down, made herself small, wrapped the quilt around her head, embraced a pillow tightly to her chest as she curled up around it. The last thing she thought as she sank into welcome sleep was how easy it was to slip back into this: her old bed, old house, old life. Just Donna Noble, office temp, living with her mum. Nobody’s mate. Nobody’s wife. Nobody.

*

After Donna had gone, accompanied by his assistant, Mycroft Holmes reclaimed his hat from the rack by the door, settled it atop his head, and nodded to John and Sherlock, who stood side by side in the living room.

“Evening, gentlemen,” he said briskly. Before either of them even replied, he was down the stairs and out the front door.

As they heard the latch click into place, Sherlock turned slightly and took a big breath, as if gearing up for something.

“John. I—“

“Hush, Sherlock, I don’t care, I don’t care. . .” John said hoarsely, shaking his head. He took Sherlock’s face in his hands and pulled Sherlock down into a desperate kiss, pushing his tongue in, sucking Sherlock’s bottom lip between his own, tugging at it with his teeth. Sherlock’s arms found the hem of John’s jumper and grasped, pulling upward. Hands gliding down Sherlock’s face, his neck, to the placket of his shirt, John yanked outward with both hands, sending buttons flying and exposing Sherlock’s pale chest. Still kissing, still working at each other’s clothes, John guided them in a tangle through the kitchen,  down the short hallway toward the guest room—Sherlock’s old room—and through the door into the dark.

John practically shoved Sherlock down onto the bed, yanked his own jumper and vest up over his head and tossed them aside, then crashed down on Sherlock, seeking Sherlock’s mouth in the darkness, twining his fingers in the waves of Sherlock’s hair, sliding his hands over Sherlock’s chest and taut belly. Sherlock’s arms went around John’s back, slid down his biceps and forearms, sought his jeans’ belt and started to work the buckle, the button, the zip. John’s breath caught against the soft flesh of Sherlock’s throat as Sherlock slid his cool, long-fingered hands into the back of John’s jeans, stroking and kneading.

Kissing his way down Sherlock’s neck to his chest, John licked Sherlock’s nipple, which hardened delightfully under his tongue. Sherlock let out a delicious, mewling moan and John’s hand found Sherlock’s hand, their fingers twined together as John raised himself to once again draw Sherlock’s tongue into his own mouth. Hungrily, he swept his tongue over Sherlock’s teeth, bit down softly on the now kiss-swollen bottom lip.

John felt his way down to Sherlock’s shirtcuff, started to unfasten the buttons, lifted Sherlock’s hand so he could kiss the fingertips one by one. Sherlock sighed.

“Don’t be quiet,” John whispered into the darkness. He reached up and slid the shirt from Sherlock’s shoulders, down his back. Sherlock sat partway up, rested his hand on the back of John’s neck, kissed him quickly, softly, again and again.

Between kisses: “I’m here. . .John. . .I’m here.”

John’s hands moved to unfasten Sherlock’s trousers, slid into the open fly and found Sherlock’s hard cock, dripping pre-cum which John used to slick his palm. He stroked firmly, urgently, and Sherlock let out a gasping, “Ah!” that made John shudder, his own cock surging, aching.

John slid down Sherlock’s torso, rolled his tongue around the head of his cock, slid his mouth down and up in time with the stroking of his hand. With his free hand, John  sought Sherlock’s fingers, tangled up with them, grasping tight. Sherlock’s hips rocked up to meet John’s mouth.

John drew his head back.

“Don’t be quiet.”

Sherlock let out a gusty sigh, then in a ragged whisper in the darkness: “I never meant to be away from you so long.”

John hummed around Sherlock’s spit-slicked cock.

Sherlock’s voice caught, the words stuttering out of him as he caught his breath, sighed, gasped. He squeezed John’s hand.

“Knowing you were still alive. And that someday. I would see you again. Is the only thing that kept me alive.”

John slid his hand down Sherlock’s shaft, circled his tongue around the head, thrust his mouth down on it again.

“You are the only important thing there is.” Sherlock’s words came out in an urgent, husky tumble. “I was always coming back for you.”

John shivered, moaned. Sherlock’s hand went into John’s hair, slid down to stroke John’s neck, the ropy muscles of John’s shoulder.

Sherlock seemed to hold his breath, then a sharp groan rose from his throat, and John shifted, catching Sherlock’s cum inside his cheek. He parted his lips, worked the cum around the head of Sherlock’s cock with his tongue, which made Sherlock draw in his breath sharply, dig his fingertips into John’s shoulder. John slid his mouth once more down the shaft of Sherlock’s still-hard cock, slowly, then drew back and away, his fingertips trailing, making Sherlock shiver. At last John’s hand came to rest on Sherlock’s hip, under the edge of his trousers. He moved up to lay beside Sherlock, wiped his saliva and Sherlock’s cum off his lips and chin with the back of his hand, pressed his face close to Sherlock’s, rubbing the tip of his nose along the sharp curve of Sherlock’s jaw. He inhaled, long and slow.

“Oh, you miracle. . .” John murmured against Sherlock’s ear.

Sherlock’s body shifted, turned toward John nearly chest to chest. Sherlock’s fingers disentangled from John’s and all at once Sherlock’s hands were working to shift his jeans down, freeing his aching cock from his boxers. Sherlock’s ingenious fingers encircled him and began to stroke, slowly, then moved away just long enough that Sherlock could slip his fingertips into John’s mouth. John circled the pads of Sherlock’s fingertips with his tongue, moistening them, then Sherlock licked his palm and slipped his hand back down between them and onto John’s cock. A few slow strokes and John was nearly weeping, his eyes rolling up and drifting shut, his mouth pressing against Sherlock’s only to open in a moan against Sherlock’s lips. His hips thrusting against Sherlock’s hand, a few guttural moans against Sherlock’s open mouth, and John came, his arm going around Sherlock’s back, Sherlock humming encouragement into John’s ear.

They lay in a tangle of limbs, breath heaving, kissing each other tenderly, quieting in the darkness.

John marveled--bewildered, frighteningly vulnerable. “You’re dead,” he murmured. “Sherlock, you’re dead.”

“I’m here,” Sherlock whispered, stroking John’s hair. “I’m here.”

*

The bells were ringing from the church behind the house, and they wouldn’t shut up.

Donna crushed the pillow against the side of her head, tried to burrow deeper into her blankets. The room was filled with unwelcome sunlight; it was well past dawn. She tried to go back to sleep but the bells kept on pealing. She pulled her arm up from under the quilt and squinted at her wristwatch. Ten forty-five on a Saturday morning; it could mean only one thing. She let out a disgusted sigh and forced herself upright and out of bed. Donna pulled out her old flannel dressing gown—one of her grand-dad’s, actually, that she had nicked off him—still hanging from its hook just inside the cupboard door, went to the bathroom for a wee, then downstairs to the kitchen, where she found the kettle still hot and rummaged around for supplies: a mug, tea, milk. She fumbled the sugar bowl onto the counter.

“Shit!” she shouted. “Shitting shit!” The bells kept on.

Her mum came rushing in from another room, her eyebrows meeting in the middle.

“What on earth--?” she began.

“It’s nothing, Mum,” Donna said quickly, “Just butterfingers.”

Her grand-dad shuffled in then, as well, wiping his hands on a rag as if he’d been tinkering on something.

“I’ll get it, Dear, sit down,” her mum insisted, already pushing Donna aside and sweeping the spilled sugar across the counter with one hand, into the upturned palm of the other.

“Who’s getting married, do we know?” Donna asked flatly, slumping into her usual chair at the little kitchen table. Her grand-dad took his seat, bracing himself with his hand on the tabletop as he lowered himself into his chair.

“It’s that Steven Rangeley,” Sylvia said, lifting the door on the breadbox and beginning to unwrap the loaf. “The girl’s from Russia or something.” Disapproval was obvious in her tone.

“She’s Ukrainian,” Wilf corrected. “Anyway, it’s a lovely day for it. Sun shining and all.”

“Bought her off that internet,” Sylvia continued, dropping two slices of bread into the toaster and moving to fill Donna’s mug from the kettle. “He only met her the once, for a week. Then here she is a month ago, the two of them living with his parents, and within a week his mother’s squawking about rushing to plan the wedding breakfast.”

Donna’s mum set a mug of steaming tea in front of her, went back to spread jam on the toast.

“That’s no love match,” Sylvia scoffed.

Donna huffed out a breath through her nostrils. “Right. Not like John and me.”

Her mother had sense enough to look slightly chastened.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” she offered, sounding defensive rather than apologetic. She set down the plate of toast in front of Donna, who didn’t even look at it.

“No one knows what goes on in someone else’s house,” Donna’s grand-dad scolded mildly, “It’s not for us to judge. Every relationship is complicated, in its way.”

Sylvia looked annoyed but didn’t say more.

Donna’s elbows were on the table and she held her mug in both hands, in front of her chin. She rested her lower lip on the rim of the cup but didn’t drink. Gazing out the window across the small back garden, over the fence Donna could see the tower of the church, the bells swinging back and forth, birds flying around the tower crazily, confused and irritated at the noise, waiting to alight back in their nests under the tower roof.

Her grand-dad asked, in a low, kind voice, “Had a tiff with your John, Darling?”

Donna felt a weight descend on her, and an almost overwhelming desire to go back to sleep. She could cross her arms right here on the tabletop and sink her head into the crook of her elbow, and sleep and sleep and sleep. She couldn’t imagine even beginning to explain, because to make everything clear to her mother and grandfather, she’d have to start at the beginning, and every beginning she could think to start with required her to go back further, to some other beginning. Sherlock wasn’t dead. Sherlock wasn’t just John’s “friend.” John had probably been in love with Sherlock. She’d known from the night she met John that he and Sherlock were. . .

“Yeah, just a bit of a tiff, I guess,” she said at last. “Something like that.”

“Ah, well, you’ll work it out,” her grand-dad offered reassuringly. His kindness elicited from Donna a slight smile. “It can’t be so bad.”

Donna’s gaze drifted back out the window. The bells stopped swinging, the birds cautiously circled back toward the tower and began to settle. There were distant voices, laughter, from the next street.

Her mother added, “You’ve had your night away; he’ll have learned his lesson. You can call him later this afternoon and tell him you’re sorry.”

Donna closed her eyes for longer than a blink, opened them again, rose from her chair. She took her tea and started back up the stairs to her room.

“What shall I tell him if he phones?” her mother called after her.

“He won’t.”

*

John spent the night awake, listening to Sherlock’s sounds—his shallow breath in sleep; surprised-sounding little closed-mouth cries; gentle snoring now and again. John would begin to doze, but each time he lost track of the sound of Sherlock beside him in the dark, he would nudge Sherlock until he stirred, or shift his own limbs in order to feel the rise and fall of Sherlock’s belly as he inhaled and exhaled, the beat of Sherlock’s heart in his chest. They’d stripped off the remainder of their clothing, slid together in a lover’s knot of entangled limbs under the duvet, laid their heads on the same pillow. Sherlock slept almost immediately, and while John was certain he had not felt so utterly spent since his endless days in the surgery during the war, his mind would not quiet enough to let him sleep.

Now the sun was pouring in the window, and John studied Sherlock’s eyelashes, the corners of his slightly parted lips, the curve of his ear. The room was chilly; the sheets and quilts were tucked up nearly around their chins. John made mental note of all the places their naked bodies touched: Sherlock’s shoulder against John’s chest, the back of Sherlock’s hand on John’s thigh, the top of John’s foot pressing into Sherlock’s shin.

John worked his arm out from beneath the sheets and began to peel them down away from Sherlock’s face to bare his neck, his shoulder, the top of his chest. . .

There was a patch of skin where Sherlock’s neck met his shoulder, darker than the rest, and shiny-smooth. An ill-defined scar, as if from something rubbing against the spot for a prolonged time. John squinted, raised himself gently on one elbow so as not to wake Sherlock, leaned across and found a matching discoloration on the other side of Sherlock’s neck. John frowned. He lay his head back down on the pillow and slid his fingertips over  Sherlock’s neck, feeling how the darkened patch of skin felt tender, new. He moved to press his lips there, puzzling.

Sherlock stirred just a bit, squinting his closed eyes, his hand turning over on John’s thigh and stroking across it lazily. John hitched his pelvis a bit, pressing his half-hard cock against Sherlock’s hip, his arm around Sherlock’s chest beneath the blankets, his face nuzzled into Sherlock’s neck.

Sherlock hummed sleepily, moistened his lips with his tongue, made a face at the taste in his mouth. John slid his hand down Sherlock’s arm, found his hand, guided it out from under the blankets and kissed Sherlock’s palm, the knuckles of his fingers. He rested their entwined hands on Sherlock’s chest.

Sherlock murmured. “You nearly punched me.” It sounded equal parts jibe and accusation.

John grinned against Sherlock’s neck. “Yes, I nearly did,” he confirmed.

A breath.

“I suppose I deserve it.”

“No, of course not,” John replied quickly. “Well.” He kissed Sherlock’s neck, let his lips linger there. “Maybe a little.”

They both laughed, just a bit. John’s fingertips--lazily stroking Sherlock’s hand--discovered bumps where no bumps should be, strange divots where Sherlock’s long fingers should be smooth and straight. He lifted Sherlock’s hand by the wrist, felt Sherlock resisting—just for a second—but then surrendering to it.

“Sherlock, your hand,” John gasped, his voice thick with alarm.

“John.” A downward inflection in Sherlock’s voice that meant John should stay calm.

John cradled Sherlock’s hand in his own, slid his thumb up and down along Sherlock’s fingers. It was obvious every one of the fingers on his left hand—the hand he used to finger the strings on his violin—had been broken, some more than once, and then healed badly. The tip of his pinky was particularly crooked, leaning near ten o’clock, and the nail of his middle finger was rotated toward its neighbor.

“Jesus.” John, half-sitting now, stared down into Sherlock’s pale face, searching his eyes. His mouth was filling up with things to say, questions to ask, and he bit down on his lips to keep them from tumbling out. Instead, he kissed each of Sherlock’s fingertips. He gently massaged each finger in turn--skipping over a few swollen, probably arthritic, knuckles. He worked open Sherlock’s palm and pressed his lips against it, tasting salt.

There were scars on Sherlock’s wrist.

White lines. Many of them. Here and there interrupted, but taken together clearly describing circles around his wrist. Now and again there were dark pink, raised keloids.  And two long, parallel lines starting near the fold of his wrist, up along his forearm for nearly six inches. They were angry pink against Sherlock’s pale skin, shiny and smooth like the scarred skin of his neck. John couldn’t stop himself; he knew what those vertical incisions usually meant—he’d seen them in Afghanistan; he’d stitched them up.

“Sherlock, did you try to kill yourself?”

Sherlock protested immediately, his voice raised. “No. Never!” John’s gaze met Sherlock’s eyes and they were wide, reddening. “I was coming back for you. I would never.” He sounded indignant, angry at the suggestion.

John could sense he was pressing too hard. He lay Sherlock’s hand aside on the bed and leaned close to his face, stroked his fringe aside, traced the bony edge of Sherlock’s eye socket with the tip of his finger. Sherlock didn’t blink.

Something dawned on John. “There’s time, right? We have time? To sort it all out.” He felt panic rising in his gut. “You’re not leaving again. You’re staying.” A demand, not a question; John did not want to ask, not really, because he was afraid of most of the possible answers.

Sherlock’s hands under the blankets began to move, stroking, grasping, urging John this way and that.

“I told you I’m here, John. I’m home.” Sherlock’s fingers encircled John’s cock and John gasped; Sherlock hummed with satisfaction. “I promise.”

And then they were kissing, stroking each other, gasping and moaning, their bodies shifting against each other, John couldn’t get close enough, wanted to cover Sherlock, collapse him, eat him alive. Sherlock hummed encouragement as John worked spit-slicked fingers inside him; Sherlock’s baritone whisper ghosting against John’s ear, his neck, yes, yes, yes. . .

John grasped at Sherlock’s shoulder, urged him over, and Sherlock shifted, turned, lay on his stomach, hips rolling against the bed, and John knelt between Sherlock’s thighs, pressing them apart with his knees. Then the pleasant blur of John’s half-closed eyes suddenly, sharply focused on Sherlock’s long, white back, illuminated by the late-morning sunlight coming through the window. Scars everywhere: long, horrible, angry scars. Scars from unstitched, infected wounds.

John’s erection shriveled; he felt sick to his stomach. He dragged his fingertips from the top of Sherlock’s shoulder, down his back all the way to his waist.

“God, Sherlock,” he choked, “Where _were_ you?”

*

Donna was still in bed when the church bells signaled one o’clock, though now she was sitting propped up on pillows with the quilts tucked all around her; she’d given up on sleep after waking from a doze with a throbbing head, a sure sign she’d overdone it on sleep. She worried the cuticles on her thumbs with her teeth, found herself staring at a fold in the bedclothes, a crack in the plaster, the way the cut-glass doorknob bent the sunlight. She couldn’t remember when she’d last been so lost in her own head.

Surely John wouldn’t want to stay married to her, with Sherlock back. They were just mates, and Sherlock. . .well he was John’s Great Love, wasn’t he? And she wanted John to be happy, of course she did. But then again, if she was just John’s mate . . .if that were true, then why was she so devastated? Her heart was really, truly, aching: there was pain in her chest and it wasn’t going away. It wouldn’t be fair of her to ask John to choose; she’d have to be the bigger person and stand aside. She couldn’t be in some weird, three-way relationship, of course, it was mad—something for tabloid television. Could she? She couldn’t. What was she thinking—John wouldn’t want that anyway; he was sensible. She’d have to give him a divorce. Maybe they could manage to stay friends. But. . .

Her phone went, playing Ziggy Stardust-era David Bowie, and she scrambled to the foot of the bed, leaning way over to the floor, digging in her purse. The display showed the caller’s name.

“Gwen! I’m so sorry I didn’t make it last night. . .”

“No, no, it’s fine. Bit weird to have that toy-boy show up here with the dinner, but he said something came up, and you’d be at yr mum’s.” Mycroft’s young male assistant had sashayed out of the flat with Donna’s store-bought lasagna and new-baby present as if he were the one whose turn it was on the Casserole Patrol.

Donna frowned. “How did he know I’d be--? Nevermind.”

“Is everything all right?” Gwen asked, meaningfully. Donna glanced at the top of the tall chest of drawers, to a framed snapshot from years back, of Donna, Gwen, and their mate Vicki, all pinned with blue ribbons, arms around each other; they’d won the pub quiz that night. The table in front of them was littered with empty glasses.

“I’m not sure,” Donna admitted. Then, “Gwen, when you were trying for the baby. . .how soon did you know you were pregnant?”

She could hear Gwen take a deep breath. “Oh, quite soon, actually. . .within the week my tits were pins and needles and I was eating everything in sight. Before I was late, I’d vomited twice.” There was a pause. “Donna, are you--?”

“Can you do those home tests before you’re late?”

“I’ll be there in an hour.”

*

John and Sherlock—now more or less dressed in pajama pants, t-shirts, dressing gowns, socks, slippers—sat at the kitchen table, drinking tea, eating the re-reheated pasties Donna had bought John the night before. (John had completely forgotten them; someone—that Anthea, maybe? She was efficient as a windmill—had shut off the oven and put the pasties in the fridge sometime the previous evening.) Sherlock had begged off disclosing any details about the scars John had discovered, but he was summarizing.

“Safe houses,” he intoned, “Vancouver. Auckland. A little while in Basque country.”

“Sounds lovely.”

“It wasn’t. Norway.”

John barked out a laugh. “Surely not!”

“It’s true. Almost nine months in wretched Norway.”

“But you hate Scandinavia.”

“Indeed.” Sherlock sipped his tea, a tiny grin playing at his lips. It was in Norway that they’d first shared a bed—a sofa, really—though most of the rest of their time there had been set to a soundtrack of complaints from Sherlock about how much he hated the place, the people, and the food, which he contended was “nothing but fish.”

John stretched out his hand, laid it on Sherlock’s wrist. “And where else?” he prodded, quietly, stroking one finger along a raised, pink scar inside Sherlock’s forearm.

“I had figured it for Kyrgyzstan; I was told later it was Tajikistan. I still think I was right.” Sherlock sipped his tea, set the cup back in its saucer. “After that, I pressed Mycroft that it was time for me to come home.”

John leaned forward, elbows on the table. “So, you knew about me, what I was doing, from Mycroft?”

“Not quite so directly, but ultimately, yes. I knew it was difficult for you at first.”

“That’s an understatement,” John exhaled bitterly.

“I knew your friend Donna was coming around a lot. I was glad of it; you needed someone.” Sherlock was matter-of-fact, as always, but there was a tenderness beneath his voice that was utterly unfamiliar. John thought Sherlock seemed a bit more slouchy than he used to, sitting there with his tea and the crumbs on his plate.

“She saved me, Sherlock,” John said plainly.

Sherlock nodded.

John had never told Sherlock much at all about Donna, other than that they’d had their one internet-match dinner date (which was met with sulking and sniping from Sherlock), and exchanged texts and emails now and then thereafter. Partly because he hadn’t been entirely convinced, himself; partly because he liked having a friendship that was uncomplicated and separate from the tangle of his life with Sherlock; and partly because he knew Sherlock would scoff and belittle him for believing in fairy stories, John had never breathed a word to Sherlock about Donna’s friend the Doctor, a Time Lord--an alien--who spirited Donna back and forth in time, all across the Universe in a little blue police callbox. John had only come to fully believe it when the Doctor himself had shown up in 221B, and John listened to both his hearts beating through an old stethoscope.

“What did Mycroft tell you about her?” John asked.

“That she was a bit loud. ‘Brassy,’ I think was a word Mycroft used. Also, ‘Honking.’”

John tsked, shook his head. Since it was clearly a time of Improbable Outcomes, John ventured, “Did he tell you about the Doctor?”

Sherlock hummed affirmatively. “Mm. I’ve met him.”

John’s eyes widened and he moved his head to indicate he wondered if he’d heard correctly. “You’ve--? You’ve met the Doctor.”

“Just the once. I very much enjoyed examining his blood. Six types of cells. Unique proteins.”

“The Doctor.” John was incredulous; it seemed impossible that Sherlock would be so casual about something he once would have deemed utterly ludicrous. “The 900-year-old space man, with the New Wave hair-do and the skinny neckties.”

“The very same.”

“He gave you a sample of his blood?”

“Well, he was bleeding,” Sherlock replied, seriously. “I offered him my handkerchief.”

“And where was this?” John was glad to be sitting; he felt strangely off-kilter.

“Norway. I distracted myself from it by mapping his genome--took me ages. You know Time Lords regenerate? Not just limbs—the whole body sometimes. And their genes carry a multitude of resistances to many of the diseases that plague us puny humans. All the muscular degenerative diseases, of course. Cancer—they have remarkable immune systems, seventeen layers deep.” Sherlock smiled slyly. “The common cold. Imagine how the pharmaceutical companies would suffer if our noses stopped running.”

John looked thunderstruck.

“My understanding is that there are people—colleagues of Mycroft’s—who have struck a particular bargain with the Doctor, in order to protect business interests. He keeps his interesting blood and his cancer-curing genome to himself—“ Sherlock examined the reflection of his own eyes in the blade of his knife, then lay it back across his plate. “—and They don’t kill him.”

“I must admit I’m surprised you believe any of it.”

“Ah, but ‘There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio,’” Sherlock quoted, “’Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’”

John smiled slightly. “Truer words. But why—How did he happen upon you?”

“It must have been shortly after he left Donna here, after he spoke to you.”

“He told you about that?”

“He told me he’d had to make Donna forget him, and that he had asked you to look after her.” Sherlock paused, seemed to be carefully choosing his words as he continued. “He was face down on the sand at low tide, at a place on the Norwegian coast called Bad Wolf Bay, when They found him. He was delivered to the safe house where I was staying. Dirty. Despondent. Possibly altered mental state. Bleeding, as I said. And he coughed up seawater for days.”

Sherlock’s hands slid across the table, palms up, inviting John to hold them. John lay his hands gratefully into Sherlock’s, and their fingers closed around each other.

“He talked about Donna, and what a friend she’d been to him. And about another girl he’d lost. And he told me he was there because he wanted Them to kill him.”

John took this in. “Did he say why?” he asked.

“Just that he’d lived too long.” Sherlock lifted John’s hand to his face, pressed John’s palm against his cheek, his lips. He closed his eyes. “They’d have been glad to do it, too; They were probably delighted to have the opportunity. Mycroft intervened.”

John sighed. “God, I wish I could tell Donna all this. It’s just. . .” he shook his head. “It’s a damned shame, her forgetting him.”

*

Donna heard the doorbell, opened her bedroom door slightly to listen. Gwen greeted her mother, “How are you, Sylvia?”

“I’ll never get used to you kids calling me that; when I grew up we called our friends’ parents Mr. and Mrs.”

Donna rolled her eyes extravagantly, knowing her mother could not see.

“Come in, come in. Let’s see that baby!” There was some shuffling and cooing as Gwen brought in the baby in her little carrier. Next, Donna’s grand-dad’s voice.

“God bless you, Gwen; she’s stunning.”

“Thanks very much, Mr. Mott,” sounds of cheek-kisses being exchanged. “Think we’ll keep her.”

“Call me Wilf. Or grand-dad.”

Donna grinned.

Her mother’s voice was quieter, but only slightly. “See if you can get Donna straightened out, dear. She can’t sulk her way out of trouble with her husband; men don’t like to feel manipulated. He’ll start to get resentful. And who’ll make his dinner, with her having a lie-in like a pouty teenager.”

Donna snorted, flopped backward on her bed, screamed into her pillow.

“Well, I’ve brought all the right medicine, I think,” Gwen said obligingly. “Chocolate, celebrity gossip mags, and beaujolais. Bit of girl talk and she’ll be fixed right up.”

“Look at that, Syl—she smiled at me!” Wilf exclaimed.

“Of course she didn’t smile, Dad, she’s three weeks old. It’s just gas. Here, let me hold her—I’ll get the wind out.”

“Thanks, Sylvia,” Gwen said, and soon enough Donna heard her coming up the stairs.

“Your mother never changes,” Gwen observed, pushing through the bedroom door and closing it behind her.

“Who are you telling?”

Gwen sat beside Donna on the bed, embraced her. She set a shopping tote next to her feet on the floor.

“All right,” Gwen said, business-like. “Let’s have it.”

Donna heaved a huge sigh, took a long pause. “You know John’s friend who died? His flatmate.”

“Yes.” Gwen reached into the bag and withdrew a huge sampler-box of chocolate truffles. She started to remove the cellophane. “What was his name? Sherman?”

“Sherlock.”

“Of course. How could I forget that?” She lifted the lid off the box and proffered it. Donna removed one without bothering to consult the paper insert mapping the flavours. She set it on her knee.

“Well, it turns out. . .And don’t ask me how this is possible, I promise I have not the slightest flipping idea. . .but it turns out that Sherlock is not, after all, actually dead.”

Gwen’s eyebrows went up.

“Exactly,” Donna said. “And last night, I swear to you, Gwen, he was standing in our parlor. Their parlor. John’s.” Gwen still didn’t say anything. Donna looked meaningfully toward the shopping bag. “Better open that wine.”

Gwen reached for it, started to unscrew the cap. “Wait,” she said, “I’m breastfeeding.”

Donna swiped it, opened it, raised the neck of the bottle to her lips, immediately lowered it back to her lap. “Shit. I could be pregnant.” She set the bottle on the little table beside her bed.

“Well, so,” Gwen looked puzzled. “What’s the problem? Surely after a year and a half of marriage, John doesn’t want you to take back his old flatmate, like you’re all at college. I mean, of course that’s nice for him that he’s not dead, I suppose. But. . . Did I miss something?”

Donna’s eyes brimmed with tears. “John and Sherlock weren’t _just_ friends,” she said, weightily. She could see her friend was trying not to look too shocked. “And now.” She couldn’t catch her breath, sobbed around a lump in her throat. “And now. We’ve been trying for a baby. And. And now.”

Gwen reached for her, hugged her hard. Donna cried against her shoulder.

“I just don’t know. I just don’t know what’s John’s going to _do_ with this. Because. Because. It’s no secret we got married because there just wasn’t anyone else. And. And we. And we got on. And we. We.”

“There, there,” Gwen soothed.

“And we were just getting old. And we were. Both. Alone.”

Gwen stroked Donna’s hair.

“So I suppose we just decided.” Donna sat back, wiped her eyes with her fingertips, got control of her heaving breath. “We just decided we may as well be alone, together.” She wiped her running nose with the hem of the bed sheet. “But Sherlock. . .” Donna shook her head. “Sherlock is who John really loved. Loves.”

“Ah, now,” Gwen said quietly. “John loves you; I know he does.”

“Well, sure, he loves me. But.”

“I’ve seen how he looks at you—d’you know John gazes at you like he’s starstruck, it’s lovely—I’ve often wished for someone to look at me like he looks at you.”

Donna’s face wrinkled in puzzlement. “Does he?”

“That man worships you,” Gwen asserted. “That is one thing I am absolutely sure of.” She lifted the box of candies toward Donna again, but Donna shook her head ‘no.’ “And judging by the fact you’re crying your heart out, with your hair looking the way it does—“

Donna made a face, mock-insulted, her sense of humour rising to the surface despite the tears drying on her cheeks.

“I’d say you’re in love with him.”

“Am I?”

“Aren’t you?”

Donna protested. “I married John because it was easy, and because I hadn’t found anyone else.”

“When’s the last time you even looked for anyone else?” Gwen challenged. “There was that New Year’s Eve down the pub when you resolved to find a husband and get married before the next Christmas—remember? You signed up with all those lonelyhearts websites, dragged me to that speed-dating thing, started crossing things off your list of ‘must-haves.’ Who’s the last man you dated, from all that?”

Donna pretended to think back. “Well,” she began, “John and I went out for that dinner.”

“And?”

“He told me he wasn’t interested in a relationship—told me all about Sherlock, even—and so we decided to be friends.”

“And had you found a husband by that Christmas?”

“No. Like I told John on that date, I wasn’t looking for a relationship.” Donna chewed her thumbnail, looked momentarily confused. “Why did I tell him that? When I was prowling for a husband?”

Gwen looked knowing, but didn’t say anything.

“And so we were mates for a while. And then Sherlock died,” Donna’s voice was drifting, faraway. “And then John just _needed_ me so much.”

“All right, and who were you seeing then? How many ‘Singles’ Mingle’ drinks-parties did you go to, all that time you were taking care of John?”

“I wasn’t seeing anyone. But not because I was—“ Donna started to protest.

Gwen took her hand, looked her hard in the eye. “Donna,” she began. “There are other ways to be in love than to fall in love. Maybe you and John grew into it.”

Donna smiled, weakly, crookedly, eyes still wet with tears.

“Just because you skipped that awful, Does he or doesn’t he, mad, terrifying part when you don’t know where you stand, doesn’t mean you aren’t in love.”

“But.”

“Nevermind. Whatever John’s feelings were--or are--for this Sherlock. . .well, I suppose the two of you will find your way. But you and John didn’t just settle for each other. You have one of the best marriages I’ve ever seen. You’ll figure this out.”

Donna sighed. “It’s mad,” she said plainly.

Gwen grinned. “It is a bit.” She reached for the wine bottle and took a swallow from it. “It definitely is a bit mad. But it’s very modern.” She grinned, offered the bottle to Donna. “Go on. You can’t do the home test ‘til tomorrow morning, anyhow—you need the first wee of the day—so you may as well.”

Donna took a long sip, made a face. “Ugh. Tastes like a dungeon.” She passed the bottle back.

Gwen’s eyebrows went up again, and she sniffed the wine. “Maybe you _are_ pregnant.”

“Why can’t things just be easy? Even living with Sherlock’s ghost was easier to sort out than this is going to be. I never minded that John missed him, I really didn’t.” Donna sounded almost pleading. Gwen nodded sympathetically. “I mean, I know what it’s like to lose your best friend. . .”

Gwen looked hurt. “Donna, I just had a baby—“

“No, no. I don’t mean you! I don’t know why I said that,” Donna said quickly, squeezing her friend’s knee. “Obviously you’re a better friend than I am; you came rushing over for my tale of woe, and I haven’t even asked about you. . .God. I’m awful.”

Gwen shook her head, “It’s fine. It’s nice to do this again. Normal, friend things. And your crying is much less distressing than hers.”

“No, seriously, now. I’m sorry I said that about losing a best friend. I really don’t know why I did. I think I just meant—“ Donna paused, thoughtful. What did she mean? “I’ve just felt sort of lonely and unimportant, for a long time. Like missing someone, sort of? Someone who made me feel important?  Anyway, taking care of John after Sherlock. . .went. . .made me feel a bit important, and not so lonely anymore.”

Gwen looked knowing, touched her nose, pointed at Donna.

Downstairs, the baby started to cry. Gwen pressed her hands to her chest. “Ouch. She’s hungry.” She rifled around in the shopping bag, lifted from beneath a stack of magazines the slim cardboard box that held the pregnancy test. “You really do have to wait until morning, especially if you’re not even late yet.” She tucked it under the edge of the pillow. “Like being a teenager again, what? Let me know what happens.”

Donna hugged her friend, grateful. “I’ll come down and see the baby,” she said. “If the shocking state of me won’t traumatize her too much.”

“She’ll probably grow up afraid of gingers, but there are worse things.”

Donna laughed. Then added, sincerely, “Thank you.”

*

John had prepared second cups of tea for each of them, and returned to his seat at the kitchen table across from Sherlock. He slipped his feet out of his slippers and rested his toes against Sherlock’s bare ankles, above his socks.

“So, you knew Donna and I were married, then.”

“Yes.”

John searched Sherlock’s face for a clue to his feelings about that fact; there was none to be found.

“And?”

Sherlock narrowed his eyes. “And?” he echoed. “And so you were married. I couldn’t expect different. I was dead.”

John winced. “Let’s not say that anymore, that you were dead.”

Sherlock cocked his head to the side, quizzically. All these movements and expressions were familiar to John, but somehow. . .was he remembering wrong?. . .everything about Sherlock was just the slightest bit. . .off. There was a weariness. And the arrogant, thoughtless manner was, if not gone, at least significantly tamped down. John recognized this particular head tilt as Sherlock’s demand for further explanation.

“Because you being dead was the worst thing that has ever happened to me.”

“But you’ve been shot. Moriarty nearly blew you up.”

“Right—‘Nearly.’ But I survived those things. Fear, you forget. And you forget physical pain. Every day you wake up and those things are further in the past.” John reached for Sherlock’s hand, his good hand, and covered it with his own, stroking it with the ball of his thumb. “But every day, after you fell, I woke up and you were still gone. And I was still alone. And every day remembering that, it was like it was brand new again. For a very, _very_ long time, Sherlock,” he intoned, gently shaking his head, “I didn’t think I could survive it. You being dead.”

“All right,” Sherlock acquiesced. “We won’t say it anymore.”

John gathered up the dishes from the table, carried them to the sink, began rinsing them. Behind him, he could hear Sherlock’s teacup click softly as Sherlock lifted it from the saucer.

He tried to sound casual as he wondered aloud, “You were how long in Tajikistan?”

“Kyrgyzstan,” Sherlock corrected blandly, then enunciated, “Three hundred, seventeen days.”

John closed his eyes, hands resting on the edge of the sink. He listened to the tap run, tried not to imagine what had caused those scars all over Sherlock. He found he could imagine it too well, opened his eyes again.

“Was it--”

“John!” Sherlock said sharply. Then, quieter: “Not good.”

John turned off the tap, set the knife he’d been rinsing into the dish drainer. He turned around, approached Sherlock from behind, reaching out his hands to lay them on Sherlock’s shoulders. Sherlock flinched, gasped, arms flying up to protect this head; he scrambled madly out of his chair, toppling it. He whirled around, keeping his back to the corner, keeping John in front of him, eyes wild, looking toward the door, the window. Ways to escape.

John was instantly furious at himself—he should know better, how many times had he played Sherlock’s part in this scene since the war?—and even more furious to think of why Sherlock’s reaction was so severe, and so instantaneous.

“I’m sorry,” he said, showing Sherlock his palms, surrendering. “Sherlock. It’s me. It’s John. I’m sorry.”

Sherlock’s breath was heaving, he looked ready to bolt from the room. He wrung his hands in front of his chest, paced in tight circles.

“I shouldn’t have come up behind you like that,” John said, extending his hand, nearly touching Sherlock, but only nearly. “I would never hurt you. You know I wouldn’t.”

Sherlock gathered himself, stood straighter, closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, he did not meet John’s gaze; he looked embarrassed.

“I can’t help that,” he said flatly.

“No, I know you can’t. Of course you can’t,” John said gently. “You’re home now, Sherlock. You’re safe.”

John took a step closer, started to reach for Sherlock’s hand. Sherlock swerved around him, avoiding any contact, and strode out of the kitchen.

“I need a shower,” he said. John heard the bathroom door close, and Sherlock slid the little bolt into place to lock himself in. It was ages before John heard the water start to run.

*

Donna drank a little more of the beaujolais, and ate a lot more of the chocolate, lingering in the bath so long the water went cool and all her bubbles fizzled away to nothing. Her head ached and she longed to phone John, because if she was going to figure out what to do, she had at least twenty-six questions she needed answered first.

That Mycroft Holmes. ( _Monster_.) How did one get in touch with him? The assistant’s mobile phone? Or was there some sort of bat-signal? Make that twenty-nine questions.

She’d let her grand-dad bring her a tray of something like supper earlier: a chicken salad sandwich (she picked out the grapes and celery and wadded them in the paper napkin), handful of vinegar crisps, glass of milk like she was eight (she drank it, regardless). She told him not to worry; just one more night, and tomorrow she’d go home to John and sort everything. He patted her hand, kissed the top of her head.

Moments earlier, her mother had come tapping at the bathroom door. “Nearly done, Donna? Some of us want to get washed up before bed.”

It was eight-fifteen. Was this how it was to be an old woman with no husband? Always complaining, and in your housecoat by nine o’clock every night, watching singing competitions on the telly? Questions she could answer with no help from John.

Donna pulled the drain plug and stepped from the tub, wrapped herself in a towel and combed her damp hair. She stared at herself in the mirror. Maybe her mum was right, she was just nothing special. She was what a man settled for when he couldn’t be with the one he truly loved. And now that John’s true love had returned, where did that leave her?

That made an even thirty.

Donna tapped cream under her eyes with her ring finger, brushed her teeth. She returned to her childhood bedroom—white eyelet cover on the bed, little desk and chair in the corner—and dressed for sleep. She climbed gratefully back into bed, with the magazines Gwen had brought, and tried hard to let the combination of mindless celebrity gossip and the gentle blur of the wine dull her thoughts so that she could sleep. The home pregnancy test was tucked under her pillow; she’d face that in the morning, too.

She found, to her surprise, that she was no longer accustomed to sleeping alone. Even in this narrow bed, in a room she’d never shared, it felt wrong somehow not to be tucking her chilly feet between John’s warm ones, not to be teasing him about his snoring (she suspected it was her own snoring that occasionally startled her awake, but she’d never admit that to John), not to hear him murmur, “G’night, Missus Watson,” after he turned out the light.

She missed him.

*

While Sherlock was locked in the bath, John had gone into the back of the cupboard in his old room and taken out the garment bag hanging there. Inside were two of Sherlock’s bespoke suits, and three of his beautifully tailored dress shirts, with their monogrammed cuffs. He re-hung a dark grey, three-button suit and a cobalt blue shirt on smooth wooden hangers in the cupboard, left the door ajar so Sherlock could find them. He fetched a pair of his own dress socks from his bedroom, found Sherlock’s trousers from the night before rumpled on the floor and slid his belt out of the loops, laid these on the hastily made bed. No vest or underwear; Sherlock never bothered.

John had resolved to stop asking questions. He’d already pushed Sherlock too hard with his selfish need to know everything there was to know, right away, in Full-Colour Sensurround. He would have to trust that there was time enough to learn where Sherlock had been these three long years, that Sherlock wasn’t leaving, that the answers would all come in their time. What John desperately wanted was a narrative that started, “I jumped from the roof of St. Bart’s hospital,” and went on to detail every minute of every day that had passed until the story ended at, “And then you nearly punched me.” He realized he’d have to settle for what Sherlock was willing and able to tell him, in his own time. For now, he tried to be satisfied with knowing Sherlock was home. He was safe. He was alive. For now, that would be enough. Really, it was more than enough; it was a bloody miracle.

They’d passed the afternoon in companionable quiet—Debussy played softly in the background, John showed Sherlock endless photos on his laptop and phone, told him about taking over Ben Harmon’s family practice (left out the bit about how in the early days, he’d been grateful to have so many geriatric patients because it gave him an excuse to cry at wakes twice a month), filled him in on Mrs Hudson (unsure on the stairs since a mild stroke last year; Donna took her shopping every Tuesday morning). Now and then Sherlock would ask something: When did you take down the wallpaper? (About ten minutes after Donna moved in.) Do you ever speak to Lystrade? (Christmas letters only.) How long has that curry place up the road been there? (About six months, give or take.) Sherlock volunteered nothing at all.

John found it difficult not to be always touching Sherlock: their knees pressed together on the sofa as they clicked through the photo gallery on John’s mobile, John’s fingers brushing aside Sherlock’s fringe when it straggled too far forward, reaching out to brush Sherlock’s shirtsleeve as he passed on his way to the kitchen for a glass of water. Harder still was to take his eyes off him; something in the back of John’s mind would not let him believe that Sherlock still existed when he was out of John’s sight. Much to his relief, Sherlock did not seem inclined to be far from him, either.

Now it was evening and they’d ordered food delivered from that curry place up the road for their supper, shared a bottle of viognier, and afterwards switched to cognac.

“This sofa is much better than that one we had before,” Sherlock commented. He was lounging across it, his bare feet in John’s lap.

“That’s all credit to Donna,” John replied, one hand resting on top of Sherlock’s foot.

“Maybe what we needed was a wife, all along,” Sherlock joked mildly.

John sipped at his cognac, tried to keep himself from asking, couldn’t. “Did you have,” he began, “anyone?”

“No one whose last name I knew,” Sherlock replied casually, seriously.

John nodded.

Sherlock set his glass on the coffee table, sat up, moved closer to John.

“Are you jealous?” Sherlock asked softly, grinning, sly. His hand slid over John’s thigh, came to rest on his hip.

John scoffed. “’Course not,” he protested. “That would hardly be fair.”

Sherlock was nuzzling his face against John’s neck, his ear; John felt Sherlock’s lips move against his skin as he breathed, “Very magnanimous of you.” Sherlock’s long fingers worked at the buttons down the front of John’s shirt; he slid his hand inside and teased John’s nipple. John’s head lolled back, his eyes fell closed.

“I do try to be,” he began, “To be magnanimous. It’s a trait I have always—“ Sherlock was flicking the tip of his tongue against John’s neck, just below his jaw. “Always esteemed highly.”

“You know what trait of yours I have always esteemed highly, John?” Sherlock breathed against John’s ear. John gasped, shook his head. Sherlock moved so that he was looking straight into John’s eyes as he lingered over the words:  “Your huge. hard. cock.” His lips curved into a wicked smile.

John stood, grasping Sherlock’s hand and tugging him to his feet. “All right then. You’re with me,” he ordered, grinning, and began to pull Sherlock toward the bedroom. They were only halfway through the kitchen when John abruptly turned, grabbed Sherlock’s chin and pulled him into an open-mouthed kiss, guiding Sherlock’s hand to his fly so that Sherlock could feel the bulge of John’s straining erection. Sherlock pressed them forward, still kissing, stroking John through his trousers, toward John’s room.

“Not there,” John muttered into Sherlock’s mouth, turning them toward the guest bedroom. He wasn’t going to fuck Sherlock in the bed he shared with Donna; there had to be a limit. But he was well and truly going to fuck him, that much was sure. This time, John made sure to flick on the light as they crashed into the bedroom.

Sherlock’s hands deftly unfastened John’s trousers and shoved them down. Pressing John’s shoulders until his back was to the wall, Sherlock then sank to his knees and took John in his hands. John looked down, noticed how wide the pupils of Sherlock’s eyes were, and Sherlock moistened his kiss-swollen lips with his tongue, half-smiled, and slid his mouth down on John’s cock; John’s knees weakened and he sucked in his breath. Sherlock hummed, long and low, around John’s cock, and John thought he’d die of it.

Sherlock went on, slowly, teasingly, long-fingered hands and warm, wet mouth making John gasp and moan, until John gently pushed on Sherlock’s shoulder, his breath huffing out, “Stop, it’s lovely, stop.”

Sherlock drew back, still lightly stroking John with his hand, looked up at him inquiringly.

“There’s more I want to do,” John half-explained. He lay his hand against Sherlock’s cheek. “God, you’re gorgeous,” he breathed, and Sherlock turned his head slightly, his tongue finding the tip of John’s thumb and circling it, sucking it between his lips. “Get undressed.” It was part order, part begging. “I want to see you.”

Sherlock stayed there on his knees, staring up at John with his cunning, wicked little smirk. He unbuttoned his shirt and slid it back over his shoulders, letting it drop to the floor. He drew his fingertips across his chest, making his nipples harden.

“Gorgeous,” John encouraged. “Trousers, now.”

Sherlock rose to his feet, standing close to John, staring hard into his eyes. Sherlock guided John’s hand to his belt and together they unfastened it; Sherlock undid the button and John tugged the zip down. Sherlock’s trousers slid to the floor and he stepped out of them.

“Hm?” Sherlock was asking for approval.

John slid his hands around to grip Sherlock’s arse, pulled Sherlock to him by the hips. John leaned in for a kiss, tasted himself on Sherlock’s lips, then slid his hands up to Sherlock’s shoulders and pushed him back, maneuvered him onto the bed. Quickly, John stripped off his clothes, tossed them aside. He took in the image of Sherlock: leaning up on his elbows on the bed; his long, pale legs; his parted, upturned lips.

“Don’t move,” John said, and dashed from the room, into his own bedside table drawer for lube and a condom. He fumbled the first foil-wrapped packet, lost it under the bed, had to go in for another, rushed back to Sherlock. Gripping the loot in one hand, he climbed up to kneel between Sherlock’s splayed legs, leaned down to kiss him. Sherlock wrested the little green bottle of lube from John’s hand and squeezed some into his palm. Still kissing, Sherlock’s hand disappeared down between his legs, and John knelt up so he could watch Sherlock working the lube into his arsehole with his pale fingers. John tore the condom wrapper open with his teeth, deftly rolled it onto his now positively throbbing cock.

Sherlock planted his feet on the bed, his knees raised, and wriggled his hips down closer to John, sliding his arse right up onto John’s thighs. John slipped one arm under Sherlock’s leg, pressed Sherlock’s thighs apart with his hands. Sherlock let his elbows slip out from under him and lay flat on the bed, his half-closed eyes trained on John’s face. John leaned in, shifted his hips. He raised his eyebrows questioningly, and Sherlock nodded, let his eyes fall closed.

John found Sherlock’s opening with his fingers, guided the head of his cock to it, pressed against Sherlock, who sighed out a breath, relaxing. John pushed in a bit, searched Sherlock’s face, slid his cock in halfway up the shaft, sucking in his breath at the sensation of Sherlock tight around him. He backed off a bit, slid back in, and Sherlock’s hand found his own cock, began to stroke. Bracing himself against Sherlock’s thigh, hugging it to his chest, John began rocking his hips against Sherlock, more firmly, urgently, his breath heaving so he had to open his mouth. He watched Sherlock’s closed eyelids flutter and squint, watched his mouth tighten into an “oh,” glanced down at his beautiful hand working his cock.

John’s breath hitched in his throat, his mouth was dry, he swallowed hard, licked his lips, grunted as he slid his cock in and out.

Sherlock’s eyes flew open, stared up at him, and John fucked him more urgently, his breath now loud and rhythmic in time with it, and Sherlock urged, “Yes, yes, yes. . .” in a held-breath whisper, his voice rising to a delicious whimper as he stroked himself in time with John’s thrusts.

Sherlock’s eyes closed again, and he groaned luxuriantly as he came, his cum spurting up on to his belly, his hips jerking as John fucked him; the sight of it set John off, and he came with a shout inside Sherlock, grinding deeply into him as the orgasm spasmed through him. His movements slowed, and stopped, and he gently, slowly, withdrew his now half-hard cock, and crashed down onto the bed beside Sherlock, who nuzzled his face against John’s, exhaled through his nose against John’s eyelid.

Once they’d caught their breath, John got up to discard the condom and fetch them a towel to mop up with. He turned out the light and they slid under the covers, foreheads touching, arms and legs entangled. They were quiet and John thought Sherlock had fallen asleep.

“John.”

“Mm?”

“You said I was safe. Earlier. You said, ‘Sherlock, you’re safe.’”

John’s hand found Sherlock, curled around his upper arm, petted him.

“Yes.”

“How do you know?”

Stunned, John caught his breath. Exhaled, “Sherlock. . .”

“How do you know?” he demanded.

“Because now I have you.” John tucked Sherlock under his arm, Sherlock’s head against his chest, wrapped his other arm tight around him, kissed the top of his head, dug his nose into Sherlock’s hair. “And if anyone—anyone—tries to hurt you again,” John felt a molten fury bubbling up in his gut and made a conscious decision not to do any of the things his therapist had taught him, to tamp it down. His whole body felt hot, thrumming . He kept tight control of his voice, said coolly, “If anyone tries that, I will kill them.”

Sherlock hummed with what sounded like relief, or satisfaction, and settled deeper into John’s embrace. John let the heat of his anger simmer a bit, then started counting, backwards by sevens, and breathing, long and slow, until he felt human again.

John was spent, had never been so tired, hadn’t spent thirty-six consecutive hours awake since the war. Certainly hadn’t had this much sex in one weekend in ages. He listened to Sherlock breathing, long and low and shallow, asleep in his arms.

John stared into the darkness, his brain ticking along in overdrive. He still couldn’t sleep.

*

Donna was dreaming she couldn’t find a ladies’ room, a sure sign it was time to get up. She rolled out of bed, started for the door, then remembered the pregnancy test and went back to fish it out from under the pillow. She hid it in the waistband of her leggings, let her baggy old t-shirt hang over it, in case she met her mum or grand-dad in the hallway. Gwen was right, it was like being a teenager all over again. What a nightmare.

The coast was clear, though, and she made it into the loo without seeing either of them. She locked the door, tore open the box, then the plastic wrap on the little white, plastic stick. She pulled off the pink cap to expose the test-strip and hurriedly got to business; she was bursting. She held the stick under the stream of her urine, splashing a bit on the toilet seat, her thighs and hand—euww—then slid the cap back over it and dried the whole thing with tissue before laying it face down inside the sink. She finished, cleaned up, moved the test out of the way so she could wash her hands, but didn’t turn it right side up yet.

She lowered the toilet lid and sat, scanning the directions, which she had torn nearly in half in her hurry to open the package. Three minutes. She glanced at her watch; she must be at least halfway through three minutes already. When the second hand got around to the five again, she’d look.

Donna closed her eyes, did a mental examination of herself for symptoms of pregnancy. She had a headache, but that could as easily be chalked up to too much sleep and too much wine. Oh, and also? Her husband’s dead boyfriend had risen from the grave night before last, so if anyone would have a headache, it would be her.

Were her tits sore? She squeezed them. Maybe a bit. But that could just be PMT; her period was due in a few days.

Guts? Normal. No nausea. She wasn’t bloated, didn’t have cramps. No cravings—no appetite at all really, since she’d left the flat in Baker Street, despite having eaten about a dozen chocolate truffles in the bath last night. But she hadn’t been hungry for them; they were medicinal.

She was nearly forty; they’d only been trying for a few months and hadn’t yet even gotten to the point of needing to buy one of these home tests. She probably couldn’t even get pregnant. Plus, John—who knew what was going on in there.

It must be three minutes by now. She consulted the directions again. Two lines, plus the word “pregnant” will appear in the test window. Well. Can’t get more clear than that. Idiot-proof. She stood, stared at the thing, upside down on the back of the sink by the taps.

All right. If there was only one line, and it said “NOT pregnant,” she’d tell John it was no harm, no foul, he could have a divorce. She’d stay here at her mum’s and save up her money from Heal’s for the few—what, weeks? Months?—until they’d sorted the legal part, then she’d have enough for a little place of her own. Not in Westminster, she’d never afford it, but somewhere. Maybe she’d get a roommate and together they could afford a flat in Camden Town, she could be a groovy hipster, London Swings, the whole bit. She wasn’t _that_ old. John and Sherlock would be her fabulous gay friends, though Donna had trouble thinking of John as anything like “fabulous,” with his buttoned-down woven shirts and his military posture, leaning on his stick. That Sherlock, though. He had a pretty face, and she’d seen photos of him in silk shirts, so there was some promise there. That is, if he turned out not to be the arrogant prick Donna secretly suspected him to be, which she figured John had a blind spot about. Anyway, she’d be fine. She’d get back out to those ‘Singles’ Mingle’ things Gwen had mentioned. Was that a real thing? That was cute, the rhyming. _Anyway._ ‘Course she’d be fine. Why wouldn’t she?

She reached for the test stick.

*

John awoke, blinking at the morning light, so knew he’d at least been dozing, but the thundering throb behind his eyes was a good clue to the quality and quantity of sleep he’d had. Most of the night he’d lain awake listening to Sherlock (he couldn’t help himself—for another long night he’d been nudging Sherlock out of silence, just to be sure of him) and trying to imagine what his life was going to look like in a year, a month, a week. Every variation seemed equally impossible. He wanted them both. He loved them both. (Love-triangle pop songs kept sticking in his head and made him feel all the more ridiculous: “I Can Have Both.” “Mr. Brightside.” How did that one, “Bizarre Love Triangle,” go? New Order gave all their songs such random titles; John didn’t trust them. Why was he wasting time on New Order when he had to sort out this madness? He tried to wipe the whole lot out of his head by thinking about Kraftwerk—songs about roadways, played on cash registers.) At one point, it dawned on him that Donna and Sherlock probably wouldn’t like each other. That gave him a horror, so he tried to create scenarios wherein he could somehow still have both of them, without making it into some three-way, “’My Bizarre Romance,’ this Thursday at 10 on SkyTV” situation. Weeknights with Donna, weekends with Sherlock? Unless there was a case. Was Sherlock even going to take cases? Alternate weeks. God, they’d have shared-custody of him. It was ludicrous.

Sherlock stirred, stretched himself full-length, pointed toes, arms above his head, pressing the headboard.

Something else had been plaguing John, between fantasies of himself, Sherlock, and Donna buying one of those massive beds so he could sleep in-between them. Though he thought about it less and less nowadays, Sherlock’s return had started up the recording John kept in his head of that awful day when Sherlock fell: every word, every breath, of their conversation was engraved on John’s memory. Despite his promise to himself not to bombard Sherlock, there was one question that couldn’t wait.

“Waking up?” he said quietly. Sherlock hummed, nodded, snuggled up to John and didn’t open his eyes.

“There’s something I wanted to ask you about.”

Sherlock nodded again, slid his hand up John’s chest and rested it in the curve where John’s neck met his shoulder.

“That day, on the roof of the hospital.” John paused. Sherlock didn’t respond, but he was still relaxed and sleepy, so John decided it was all right to continue. “Were you really. . .It sounded like you were crying.”

Sherlock murmured, “You’re afraid I was putting it on?”

“I’ve seen you do it before.” Knowing now that Sherlock’s death had been a ruse, he wondered when the ruse had begun. Sherlock could have been manipulating him with crocodile tears, and it’s not as if John could have looked him in the eyes to judge the truth of it.

Sherlock raised his head, resting his chin on top of his fist, on John’s chest. His pale eyes met John’s gaze solidly. Matter-of-factly, without melodrama, Sherlock said, “I never cried a day in my life, until I was saying goodbye to you.” John searched Sherlock’s face. “I’ve no reason to lie,” Sherlock pointed out. “All the damage I could possibly do is already done. You could have just as easily punched me and thrown me out of the flat the other night; no one would blame you. I’ve nothing to lose by being honest. It wouldn’t serve me to follow a three-year deception with yet more lies.”

John took the point. They were quiet a few minutes, and Sherlock settled himself back down onto the pillow, his face nuzzling against John’s. John couldn’t help thinking that if only he’d known that Sherlock wasn’t dead, he could have saved Donna from. . .this. She was incredible; she didn’t have to be tangled up in this madness. She could’ve gotten on with her life, met a bloke who loved her and her alone. Of course, John had loved her alone, for a while. . .

“Three years.” John said at last.

“I didn’t want it to be so long,” Sherlock said, echoing what he’d murmured into the darkness, that first night. “Moriarty had hired a rogues’ gallery of assassins; every time one was eliminated or bought off, another one sprang up, like the heads of a hydra. . .you were in danger. Mrs. Hudson. Lystrade. It took a bit longer than anticipated to sort it all out.”

“Mycroft should have told me,” John scolded.

“What would you have done, John?”

“Come and find you!” John’s words rushed out, frustrated, desperate.

“Exactly. That’s exactly why he didn’t tell you.” Sherlock kissed John’s shoulder. “I jumped to save you. Everything I did after it was to save you. It just took a while.”

John pondered this.

“Now I have a question for you,” Sherlock said.

“All right. Fair enough.”

“Your Missus.”

“What about her?”

“Are you in love with her?”

John did not hesitate. “Yes.”

“Are you in love with me?”

Again, without hesitation: “Yes.”

Sherlock drew back, and the look on his face—the half-smirk, the raised eyebrow, the narrowed eyes—was one as familiar to John as his own reflection in the mirror.

“Now _that_ , Doctor Watson,” Sherlock said, eyes glimmering, “is an interesting problem.”

*

END.

**Author's Note:**

> "Contretemps" is a French word referring to "poor timing."


End file.
